[Fuge-devel] Open Source Licensing for FuGE Code

[Allyson Lister]

Hi all,

Currently, we've extended the Creative Commons (CC) license originally used in the specification document to the code for the various STKs.

However, I've just realized (via discussions with a few people in the office) two things about the CC license:

1. it's meant to be a real no-no for code. It really should *not* be used for the STKs (told to me by people who know more than I about open-source licenses (OSLs)).
2. it isn't one of the officially-recognized OSLs recognized by sourceforge

I'm not an expert on OSLs, but I think we do need to decide on the proper OSL to use for the various fuge stks pretty soon. I can easily replace the license statements in the xsd stk and in the hibernate stk (in development), and I'm expect that Leandro could do the same for the ejb3 stk.

The list of applicable OSLs is available from http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical (and yes, I have noticed that, even though the CC license doesn't seem to be listed here, the OSI people do use it to license all of their web pages!)

SyMBA (an SF project I'm involved in that builds on the FuGE stk) uses the LGPL. That would be my suggestion, but I'd be interested to hear from others.
--
Thanks,
Allyson :)

Allyson Lister
Research Associate
Centre for Integrated Systems Biology for Ageing and Nutrition
Newcastle University
http://www.cisban.ac.uk
School of Computing Science
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU

[Chris Taylor]

Hiya.

The only licence I've seen used much apart from LGPL is the
Apache one: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html

Cheers, Chris.

Allyson Lister wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Currently, we've extended the Creative Commons (CC) license originally
> used in the specification document to the code for the various STKs.
>
> However, I've just realized (via discussions with a few people in the
> office) two things about the CC license:
>

> 1. it's meant to be a real no-no for code. It really should *not* be

> used for the STKs (told to me by people who know more than I about
> open-source licenses (OSLs)).

> 2. it isn't one of the officially-recognized OSLs recognized by

> sourceforge
>
> I'm not an expert on OSLs, but I think we do need to decide on the
> proper OSL to use for the various fuge stks pretty soon. I can easily
> replace the license statements in the xsd stk and in the hibernate stk
> (in development), and I'm expect that Leandro could do the same for the
> ejb3 stk.
>
> The list of applicable OSLs is available from
> http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical (and yes, I have noticed
> that, even though the CC license doesn't seem to be listed here, the OSI
> people do use it to license all of their web pages!)
>
> SyMBA (an SF project I'm involved in that builds on the FuGE stk) uses
> the LGPL. That would be my suggestion, but I'd be interested to hear
> from others.
> --
> Thanks,
> Allyson :)
>
> Allyson Lister
> Research Associate
> Centre for Integrated Systems Biology for Ageing and Nutrition
> Newcastle University
> http://www.cisban.ac.uk
> School of Computing Science
> Newcastle University
> Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
>
>

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[Miller, Michael D (Rosetta)]

hi all,

LPGL will mean that the STK will be unusable for inclusion in any
commercial product (or any one who wishes to extend it for their own
use) since it requires any changes need to be made public. for MAGE we
used the MIT license (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)
which allows alteration with acknowledgement but no need to make the
altered code open source. this helped us here to create our own version
of the MAGE stk that worked with our proprietary classes.

we went this way for MAGE because of the collaborative effort between
private and public organizations that contributed to MAGE, which is also
true of the FuGE effort.

i'd prefer the MIT license because it is simple and direct in intent.

cheers,
michael

Michael Miller
Lead Software Developer
Rosetta Biosoftware Business Unit
www.rosettabio.com

[Allyson Lister]

Hi all,

Makes sense. For those reasons, it seems that the MIT license is the frontrunner. Any other ideas?

Thanks!

[Angel Pizarro]

You could just put it in the public domain:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Angel Pizarro
Director, ITMAT Bioinformatics Facility
806 Biological Research Building
421 Curie Blvd.
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6160
215-573-3736

[Miller, Michael D (Rosetta)]

hi angel,

 

interesting, looks like a possibility.  i'm still more comfortable with the MIT license mostly because it's already been vetted.

 

allyson,

 

what were the issues with the creative commons license that makes it a no-no for code, would they also apply to the cc public domain?

 

cheers,

michael

---

From: fuge-deve...@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:fuge-deve...@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Angel Pizarro
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 4:41 AM

[Allyson Lister]

Hi Michael, all,

Sorry this took so long. Things are busy all around! But, now that I am ready to commit to SF, I guess we should decide on a license.

My friend who said that CC could be a problem for code said it's a problem as it is designed for documents and documentation, and not for code that is meant to be used etc. There is a good summary here: http://jay.tuley.name/archives/2006/03/27/5-reasons-not-to-choose-a-Creative-Commons-license-for-code , especially numbers 2 and 1.

They suggest, among others, the MIT license, which has already been suggested by Michael. Perhaps this is the way to go?

Thanks,
Allyson

2008/5/15 Miller, Michael D (Rosetta) <Michael...@rosettabio.com>: